Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

My Digital Hero: Dora Michail, MD, Commercial Growth, The Telegraph Media Group

We’re asking some of our industry’s leading figures to nominate their digital hero and to explain what’s so special about them.

Dora is one of digital media’s most widely respected figures. Before The Telegraph, previous roles included running the Yahoo EMEA Programmatic Marketplace.

Who is your digital hero?

I’m counter-nominating the inimitable Cadi Jones.

What have they done to win hero status in your eyes?

Cadi never takes the easy route or the safe choice, she’s always up for a challenge and is the person you want on your team when you’re building something from the ground up and need to launch something new and innovative in market.

Upon leaving Yahoo she joined the Pangea Alliance, which brought early UK market focus to programmatic publisher alliances, and then moved on to Clear Channel to lead commercial innovation when Programmatic OOH was very nascent.

She’s now at Beeswax, leading their EMEA efforts to bring greater and much needed control and transparency to the eco-system for both buyers and sellers.

On top of that, she finds time to be Head of Partnerships at Bloom UK, a professional network for women in communications, as well as co-founder of WomenPresent, a social enterprise to help end the problem of poor gender diversity among speakers at conferences.

How has their heroism helped drive digital?

Publisher alliances, transparency in the supply chain, programmatic OOH, greater diversity within our industry through the empowerment of women via Bloom and WomenPresent – you name it!

What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?

I’m proud that under my stewardship The Telegraph became a founding partner of The Ozone Project, the digital news brand venture between The Telegraph, The Guardian, News UK & Reach Plc.

The Ozone Project has the power to truly transform the UK ad market, providing a much needed alternative choice to the current scaled solutions in market and being part of the crucial change that our industry needs as programmatic buying matures and evolves towards quality, trust and transparency.